Socialism in Motion: A Trainwreck

More bullshit from the ignorant.

We were talking about France, remember? That country and the rest of Europe chose austerity measures over Keynesian stimulus, against the Keynesian recommendation and with exactly the effects (high unemployment, curbed growth, economic depression, liquidity crunch) predicted by (among many other Keynesian theorists) Krugman. He was right, and his critics were wrong.

Most of the 17 trillion US debt came from pre-Crash tax cuts for wealthy people (from Reagan on, piling up with interest) and W's borrowing for TWAT - that money went mostly to the Middle East and offshore investment and other cash piles controlled by the rich, and was not available for Keynesian stimulus.

The standard, Keynesian theory stimulus amount - as recommended by Krugman - was twice what Obama's administration and the US government put into the economy as stimulus. In addition, the Keynesian recommendation was to inject the money in the form of infrastructure project wages and other public works as well as tax cuts for lower incomes - this was not done, except for Obama's temporary payroll tax holiday and extension of unemployment benefits. In addition, the Keynesian recommendation was to make sure it was a net government increase in spending total - much of the actual Federal stimulus (the unemployment benefit extensions before Congress canceled them, the payroll tax holiday before it was rescinded by the Republicans in Congress) was swiped out by State and local contractions in government spending, leaving a net Keynesian stimulus of something less than 250 billion mostly given to the wealthy - something like a quarter of the minimum Keynesian theory recommended to restore economic health, and to the wrong end of the economic ladder.

The result was exactly as Krugman predicted at the time - continuing high unemployment, wage stagnation, and increasing debt regardless of recovery from the immediate danger. It was enough to avert the onset of a second Great Depression, however, and that was obviously a great benefit for which the proper attitude is thankfulness - that was a near miss, and we are not out of the woods yet. We should, in Keynesian theory, double that stimulus and aim it at the lower income levels in such a way that it cannot be wiped out by local government retractions. Failure to do that ensures a yet longer time of economic hardship for most Americans, according to Keynes, and a yet greater burden of debt when things do pick up - if ever.

Except they were and are correct in their predictions, as illustrated by the fates of the countries - such as France - who defied all modern economic theory as borne out by the many decades of economic performance subsequent to WWII, and imposed austerity measures on already depressed, liquidity trapped economies. The exact wrong thing to do, according to Keynes.

Regardless opt what you think of Keynesian economics, it's just ignorance to blame Keynesian theory for the fates of economic entities that did the exact opposite of what Keynesian theory recommends.

And it's worse than ignorant to call that 17 trillion of mostly Reagan and W era debt a Keynesian "handout". That's not just wrong, but malicious. There's an agenda involved, a propaganda operation that seeks entrenchment of the wealthy amid the ruin of everyone else.

 

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All unions are labour monopolies by nature...this is where they derive their power, from the inability of the buyer to shop around.

This often had positive effects at the dawn of the industrial revolution, as most industrial workers had no political voting rights and thus no legal protection from abuse.

 

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Oh hogwash, that like all your notions is not based in reality or even rational thought. I don't suppose you have heard of globalization or the current unemployment woes? When you say "all" you are nearly always wrong. Unions don't constrain the labor supply. Management does. No one forces management to sign contracts. Businesses and some trade unions act through government to restrict supply and form monopolies (AMA).

If your assertion were true, all laborers would be unionized. And that is clearly not the case.

 

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Nonsense. Teachers unions, for example, do not prevent school districts from selecting from among many available candidates to fill jobs. One of my jobs is unionized, and employees are hired from a pool of applicants by resume and interview.

 

Private Unions are fine - they can help run their respective corporations out of business, sometimes doing us all a big favor. Public Unions are a menase as there's no 'going' bankrupt. Thus, we end up with institutionalized idiocracy (See: Department of 'Education'). The Department of Education, at one time, had the third largest budget in the world, after the US and Japanese governments. It costs us nearly $80 BILLION each and every year. As an example Apple Inc, the worlds' largest corporation, across the entire globe only generated $37 billion in profit. This means you'd need TWO Apples to fund ONE department of 'education'. What does the Department of Produce? Ignorance.

How many mother's, do you suppose, have to put their children into Day Supervision Centers (instead of staying at home and giving them personal instruction) to pay the $80 BILLION A YEAR wasted on the Department of Propaganda? Each and every year they blow through that much money with nothing to show for it other than another year of mindless labor-cogs spilled over into the hyper-regulated 'markets' to work as fastfood employees or greeters at a chain store.

How pathetic Amooorikkka has become.

Well, there's nothing to do about it now. Just wait until this bad boy sinks. Along the way we'll need a lot more of what the USA actually still does produce: Violence. Oh, and we'll need a "Progressive" tax to take from the retired and give to 'society' - you know, to fund the Department of Propaganda.

 

Your inability to post factually accurate assertions is really kind of odd - it's far beyond chance, and obviously has some kind of mechanistic explanation.

Anyway, here is a list of government budgets by country, in which we can see that an 80 billion a year DOE would rank 36th rather than 3rd among them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_budgets_by_country But of course the 80b figure is imaginary in the first place:

And here is a compendium of US DOE budgets over the years: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf

In a pie chart of US government expenditures, the DoE is usually in the smaller section labeled "other". The Department of Defense gets its own section - it is more than ten times as big.

The money appropriated for the DoE in 2013 was about 40 billion, and more than half of that went to Pell Grants and similar investments - the US government probably breaks even or better on them. A good share of the remainder went to grants for local and State elementary and secondary schools - these have been used mainly to offset property taxes, with the local taxpayer more than breaking even.

Those mothers forced to put their kids in day care to pay a tax bill of 250 dollars per year would suffer. Assuming a reasonable tax structure, such as a progressive income tax and write-offs of family expenses, such mothers would be much less imposed upon.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this...society is usually said to involve two kinds of values - qualitative values and quantitative values.

If all values were economic this would be exclusively quantitative, and thus easily measured by numbers.

Most would regard this as an empty sterile vision of life...and possibly even a SICK vision.

 

Yes, I agree with all of this, and its very much aligned with the book I mentioned previously by Charlotte Iserbyt:

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/book.htm


"For over a twenty-five-year period the research used in this chronology has been collected from many sources: the United States Department of Education; international agencies; state agencies; the media; concerned educators; parents; legislators, and talented researchers with whom I have worked for at least twenty-five years. In the process of gathering this information two beliefs that most Americans hold in common became clear:

1. If a child can read, write and compute at a reasonably proficient level, he will be able to do just about anything he wishes.

2. Providing such basic educational proficiency is not and should not be an expensive proposition.

Since most Americans believe the second premise-that providing basic educational proficiency is not and should not be an expensive proposition - it becomes obvious that it is only a radical agenda, the purpose of which is to change values and attitudes (brainwash), that is the costly agenda. In other words, brainwashing by our schools and universities is what is bankrupting our nation and our children's minds.

In 1997 there were 46.4 million public school students. During 1993-1994 the average per pupil expenditure was $6,330.00 in 1996 constant dollars. Multiply the number of students by the per pupil expenditure for a total K-12 budget per year of $293.7 billion dollars. If one adds the cost of higher education to this figure, one arrives at a total budget per year of over half a trillion dollars.

U. S. twelfth graders scored below the international average and among the lowest of the 21 nations in both mathematics and science general knowledge in the final year of secondary school.

Obviously, something is terribly wrong when a $6,330 per pupil expenditure produces such pathetic results. This writer has visited private schools which charge $1,000-per-year in tuition which enjoy superior academic results. Parents of home-schooled children spend a maximum of $1,000-per-year and usually have similar excellent results."

 

I was going to ignore this run-aground, but what the hey:

It's always a mistake to agree with Michael when he is asserting physical facts - numbers or times or comparative quantities of something; he's invariably wrong.

1) The entities that pay unionized teachers can and do go bankrupt in the US - Detroit, say. 2) The DOE has little to do with unions, public or private 3) those budget and comparative budget numbers are way off 4) most of the DOE money goes to college level education or preparation for it - again, no unions involved, mindless labor cogs not the immediate prospect (colleges are where we get our doctors and engineers and such). And so forth. Michael lives in fantasy world of invented history and circumstance. Agreeing with him is a dubious step, which should be carefully checked.

Meanwhile:

So the American public has been misled somehow as to the nature and cost of educating the young. Did you act to correct these misapprehensions?

Obviously. Some research has been done in the matter, and factors such as racism, childhood lead exposure, income inequality, and omega3/omega6 dietary fat ratios, have popped out as significant, but they appear to explain only about 2/3 of the US deficit (rough estimate). So a significant fraction of the US student's underperformance in international tests seems to be a consequence of the way schools in the US manage things. We might look into this, eh?

But this kind of confusion will not guide us:

Those numbers are not informative - private schools that yield excellent results compared with demographically similar public schools (a minority of them do) spend far more than 1000@yr on each student, and so do home schooling operations (both the successful and the failing) if reasonable numbers for teaching time and infrastructure are included. Obviously a school can look a lot cheaper by omitting sports, teachers salaries, heat and repairs on the buildings, transportation and medical services, and so forth, from its budget. So?

I would start by checking out the setups in the better performing systems, and noticing what they do differently. A couple of things I've noticed, aside from the greater amounts of fresh air and exercise, the lower levels of lead exposure, the lower degree of income inequality, the higher omega 3/omega 6 dietary fat ratio, and so forth, is that their school systems are centralized nationally, their teachers are comparatively better paid and better treated, they rely less on private schools and home schooling, and they do less standardized testing.

 

Except as usual, you have your facts wrong again. State, county, and municipal governments can and do go bankrupt (e.g. Detroit).

One day you are complaining about a government going bankrupt, the next you are complaining that they cannot go bankrupt. Do you not see the glaring inconsistencies in your posts?

 

Case in point, someone who uses an apostrophe for plural instead of possessive. Was u edukated in an govermint skool?

 

EU Prepares to Reject France’s 2015 Budget

BRUSSELS—The European Union is preparing to reject France’s 2015 budget, according to European officials, setting up a clash that would be the biggest test yet of new powers for Brussels that were designed to prevent a repeat of the eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said last month that his country would run a budget deficit of 4.3% of gross domestic product next year—far from the 3% deficit it had previously pledged. Stripping out the effects of the weak economy, the government’s planned cost cuts would amount to just 0.2% of GDP, falling short of cuts worth 0.8% that it had agreed upon with Brussels.

That could put France’s budget in “serious noncompliance” with tightened EU deficit rules, likely leading the commission to send it back to Paris for revisions, European officials said.

 

And the headline for that thread would be "Capitalism in Power: the Beatdown Continues".

 

Crony-Capitalism and Governmental Incompetence continues...see, you can really can only make so many of those 2,000 trains-too-wide-for-their-platforms orders and reality, with real limits, starts to catch up. And while some idiot Keynesian-voodoo will have you believe burying fiat currency in bags and digging them up (or rebuilding thousands of train stations) 'creates jobs' and is "good for society", over here in the real world it's anything but good for anyone other than the Crony Industrialists getting the government contracts.

Let's see how much longer the German public can take of the Euro. At some point enough will be enough and this farce called the Euro will come to an end. The same can be said of the USSA and the US dollar. At some point people will say enough-is-enough. And at that point, they'll stop following these idiots with their farcical Nobel "I'm really good at killing people" Peace Prizes and Nobel "War with Aliens" Prizes in Economics, and then things will get interesting.

I'm guessing, 30 - 40 more years, give or take 15 years. You don't need to worry yourself, you and I get to live in a perpetual New Economy where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Just the way Amoorikans like it. Oh, and we all get to be spied on - for the good of the country. Oh, and we all get to be searched by the Police in our Police State - for the good of the country.

Onwards and Downwards.

 

And belongs in thread about the problems we have with capitalism when corporate interests get political power. France, for example, as you illustrated, abandoned Keynesian economic principles

- interestingly, you refer to them as "voo-doo", either forgetting or tactically usurping (standard Koch/Murdoch/Fox propaganda tactics, which you have employed so often as to long ago reveal your sources and affiliations) that "voo-doo" economics in the US is famous vernacular for US President Reagan's earlier abandonment of Keynesian economic principles and consequent damage to the US economy, ongoing -

and is suffering the consequences, as did and is the EU generally.

In short, this entire thread was started and continues as an attempt to blame socialism for the consequences of crony capitalism, and sound economic principles for the consequences of abandoning them, a propaganda effort far advanced in the US. Its purpose is to forestall efforts to levy sufficient taxes or impose sufficient regulatory burdens on US corporations and the associated wealthy elite.

 

Keynesian economic principles ARE Crony-Capitalism. Just who do you think "The Government" hires to fulfill it's economic interests? ACME Road Corp.? ACME Jet Fighter Inc. ACME dig-holes-fill-holes & Co? No, the State's Government calls on it's Crony Capitalist insiders (most of whom couldn't give two flying f*cks about quality) and these insiders do the shittiest job possible while raking in public fiat debt-based currency hand over fist. Generational debt, left to the poor suckers unfortunate enough to be born a tax-serf on the Central Banking Farm.

The phrase "Good enough for Government Work" is commonplace for a reason. So, hope you're enjoying the New Economy, it's not going away any time too soon.

Let's see how the European Socialism you love so much works out for the French, Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese and Italians.

 

What is fascinating in this screed is this idea that these Crony Capitalist companies do the work without hiring anyone. Now in the case of the Iraq war 2.0, the US government literally hired contractors that did nothing, but even in the case of hiring someone to dig a hole and fill it up, someone has to be hired to dig and to fill. That is actual people getting paid to do work. Without including actual people getting actual jobs that pay, one can't have a serious position on an economy.

 

So we agree that Keynesian economics is not Socialism, Progressive or otherwise. That's a start. But it's still true that:

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You left out the Germans and Swiss and Danes and Norwegians and Swedes and Iceland and so forth.

You also left out the Brits and the Irish, who along with the Greeks and French and Spanish and so forth provide us with examples of capitalist banker imposed austerity programs enforced contrary to Keynesian principles.

 

Nice demagoguery.

 

Filling in a hole and digging it up again isn't a job that leads to economic prosperity. No one needs nor wants a hole dug up and filled in repeatedly. Prosperity comes from time and liberty. By paying someone to dig up a hole and fill it in, you're taking their time - thus they're less prosperous. Not to mention, if a person's only worth to society is to dig a hole and fill it in, that sort of says something.

Why is it, do you think, Communist countries were so poor? Everyone had a job. Everyone was paid. Yet almost everyone was poor. Many even starved to death and those that didn't were physically smaller than their body's potential due to undernourishment.